


I'll be Home for Christmas

by megan_waffles



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, I'll Be Home For Christmas, Megan can't tag for shit, Merry Christmas, Work Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:06:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5528840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megan_waffles/pseuds/megan_waffles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There’s a rule at a company Christmas party: talk to everyone you need to (as briefly as you can), then get the hell out."</p><p>When sad songs touch sad hearts, the result isn't always what you might expect...</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll be Home for Christmas

There’s a rule at a company Christmas party: talk to everyone you need to (as briefly as you can), then get the hell out.

When you’re Peggy Carter, it becomes the only time when being the only woman in the SSR comes in handy. She managed to get Daniel, Jack, and a small handful other agents to see her as just another agent. But she was still the underdog in the group. Nobody ever liked the person with the most arrests and solved cases, but men tended to hate this person even more when they’re a woman.

She wasn’t the only woman at the party. Some of the older agents had brought their wives to the party, others a girlfriend or fiancée, and were currently swaying back and forth on the dance floor.

Peggy had done her best to seem friendly with all her coworkers. Her face hurt from smiling so much. Fake smiles of course. Why waste the energy on someone who wouldn’t accept her?

As the song was wrapping up, Peggy saw her chance to leave. She sat right near the doors, and was prepared to just get up and go as soon as she could do so inconspicuously.

But then she couldn’t. She could hear the starting beats to ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’, and she was rooted in place.

Peggy stood up from the table quickly, knocking an empty champagne glass over. The people closest to her turned in her direction, murmuring about what could have set the odd little female agent off. She looked up and saw Daniel staring at her curiously from across the room. Peggy could feel the heat rising in her cheeks and tears forming in her eyes, and she ran.

***

Being Chief of the SSR wasn’t all it cracked up to be. He could handle the long nights. Hell, he had been at the office that late anyway when Dooley was still in charge.

But if there was one thing he couldn’t handle, it was being surrounded by these dumbasses for more time than he needed to. Daniel had to make sure he spoke with all the agents and their dates if they had brought one. And even then he couldn’t leave. As chief, it was his job to stay until the last dance had been danced, the last drop had been drunk, and the last foot was out the door. His face hurt from all the fake laughs and smiles, but his leg was bothering him even more. Usually by this time of night, he would’ve taken it off already, washed the stump and the socket, and would be sitting in his bed reading before bead.

They weren’t even halfway through the night.

Daniel looked around the room from where he was sitting to see if he could find Peggy, and laughed lightly when he did.

As per typical Peggy fashion, she was sitting by the door, ready to leave as soon as she could. He felt bad for her. It wasn’t easy being surrounded by these pricks all day, but having to deal with them at night too, after drinking maybe just a little too much...

As he heard the current song wrapping up, he looked over at the band and applauded. When he turned to look back at Peggy, a curious thought came to mind.

 _I could ask her to dance,_ he thought. _Neither of us is here with someone, and it’s not like anyone would think anything of it... Well, other than you._

Daniel shook his head. There were days he couldn’t understand why he had been picked to be the new chief. After all, he’s clearly the only one who’s dumb enough to fall for Cap’s girl, not to mention the fact that she would never replicate his feelings. The comments the other agents would make... _She’s only with him to gain favour... She’s a climber... No respect for the real way us men do things around here..._

He couldn’t bear the thought of doing that to her. He loved her, but he respected her more.

But maybe Krzeminski was right. _No girl is gonna trade in a red, white, and blue shield for an aluminum crutch._

  _Just one_ dance, he thought. _There’s no harm in a dance._

As the next song started, he started to rise to go ask her to do him the honour when he heard a glass fall over on a table. He looked in the direction of the noise, and saw Peggy standing agitatedly at the table with a look of shock and distress on her face.

Daniel knew that face. It was the Cap face, the look she got every time something tragically reminded her of him.

She looked up and saw him looking back at her, and, with tears forming in her eyes, she turned and ran out of the room.

“Sousa,” Jack said suddenly, popping up at his side. “What’s going on with Carter?”

“I don’t know, Thompson. I think it might’ve been the song”.

It was a reasonable assumption to make, he thought. The song brought back a lot of tough memories for everyone, especially the ones who had lost somebody in the War. It was a reminder that they wouldn’t be home for Christmas. That they wouldn’t ever be home again.

Daniel noticed Thompson heading in the direction where Peggy ran.

“Thompson, stop. Let me go talk to her. You stay here.”

 Jack gave him a curious look, but shrugged his shoulders.

“Whatever you say, boss,” he replied, turning back towards the room.

Daniel stood up, and went to go find Peggy.

***

“D-damn it, Steve,” Peggy scarcely whispered, hiccupping through the tears streaming down her face. “Y-you’re late. You p-promised me. Saturday at 8 at the St-stork Club. You’re late.”

She was sitting at her desk in the deserted SSR office, holding the picture of pre-serum Steve she had found in the filing room at the SSR.

He wasn’t home. He had never come home. Howard was still going out every few weeks to see if he could find the ship, but his efforts were becoming less frequent, and Peggy couldn’t blame him. They had been looking for Steve for well over a year now, and there was still no sign. It sometimes made her wonder if the whole thing had just been a dream. The war, Hydra, Red Skull, the plane crash, all of it.

Suddenly, she heard uneven footfalls approaching the bullpen. She put the picture of Steve away in her desk drawer and wiped under her eyes, hoping her make-up hadn’t smeared at all. The door creaked open, and Daniel’s dark head of hair poked through.

“Hey, Peggy,” he said softly. “I saw you run out of the party pretty quick. Is everything okay?”

Peggy bristled. Oh course Daniel was the one to come talk to her. Who else would the buffoons send to come and talk to Crazy Carter?

“I’m _fine_ ,” she said briskly, trying to mask the slight tremble of her voice. “I just needed to leave. I can barely stand being around these people at work. Three hours there after a long day is certainly enough for me.”

But the quiver was impossible to hide. With the way Daniel was looking at her, Peggy knew that she clearly hadn’t done a good enough job at hiding the evidence of her breakdown.

Daniel slowly made his way over to her. He grabbed the chair from his old desk and placed it beside Peggy’s. He sat down, placed his crutch against her desk, and stretched out his bad leg.

After a lengthy moment of silence, he sighed and spoke.

“I told you about the explosion that took my leg, right?” he asked her. She nodded tentatively, not knowing where he exactly it was he was going with the story.

“My neighbour Benji and I enlisted together. We had been inseparable since I’d moved onto the block, so it only made sense that we’d sign our lives away together. Except that he literally did sign his away. The shrapnel that tore through my leg and took it from me took my best friend too. I got settled into the Vet’s hospital about a week before Christmas, and on Christmas Eve after Mass, my Ma brought his mother and his little sister to talk to me. I had to sit there and hold the poor old lady’s hand as I told her that her son wouldn’t be coming home for Christmas that year, or ever again. It’s been three years since I had to do that. His sister hasn’t talked to me since. I think a part her blames me for not keeping him safe, for coming home when he couldn’t. I still see his mother at Mass every year on Christmas Eve, but it is so, _so_ painful to be near her without feeling the same way her daughter does.”

Peggy was shell-shocked. She didn’t know what to say. Her gaze was cast to the floor, her hands clenched together in her lap to stop them from shaking.

“I-” she started.

“Peggy,” Daniel said strongly, grabbing her hands with both of his. “Steve isn’t coming home, and Benji’s isn’t either. But you and I, we made it back. It’s important we remember them. It’s important to cry over them every once in a while. But we made it back. We need to live.”

Peggy lifted her head, and looked straight into his eyes.

“We made it home for Christmas,” she said, catching on to what he was saying.

“Yes,” he laughed breathily. “You and I made it home for Christmas.”

Peggy stood up slowly, and helped pull Daniel to his feet. She wrapped her arms around his torso with a firm, but gentle grip. Tentatively, he in turn wrapped arms around her shoulders, pulling her closer to his chest.

After the beautifully silenced minute, Daniel pulled back and grabbed his crutch.

“Give me two seconds,” he said with a small, warm smile on his face and a slight blush on his cheeks.

Peggy’s gaze followed him around the bullpen as he made his way to the radio in the corner. Turning the dial on the old, dusty box, he found the frequency he was looking for. As he made his way back towards her, she could hear one of her favourite Christmas tunes coming through the speakers: ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’.

When he came to stand before her once more, he put out his hand as an invitation.

“Ms. Carter, would you do me the honour of giving me this dance.”

***

To Hell with it all. Daniel was getting his dance.

He wasn’t sure what had made him want to open up to her in the first place, but after seeing the small smile and the look of determination in her eyes, he knew it was worth it, and he would more than willingly do it again.

She had hugged him first.

Maybe she loved him, or maybe she didn’t. Hell, she might never feel the same way. But none of that mattered when they were swaying precariously back and forth in the small, open space in the bullpen. Her smaller hand hit perfectly in his own, and his hand was placed on her waist just the way hers was on his arm: lightly, but with a grip that conveyed more than words. A grip that promised patience and love and understanding. It was a grip that vowed to never forget.

Her head was resting against his shoulder, and they danced there in a perfect moment of peace, listening to the soft music as it warmed their hearts.

Slowly, Peggy lifted her head off his shoulder, and replaced it with the hand he previously been holding. His newly freed hand settled on her waist as they stared deeply into each other’s eyes. She cautiously started to move her face closer to his, and his eyes fluttered closed when they were mere millimeters apart.

Her lips were warm and soft and tasted of champagne. He pulled her as close as he could while they kissed, lost in a moment of quiet passion.

As the song ended, Peggy gently pulled away. Daniel’s hands flexed instinctively against her waist, worried she was a dream that would slip away as soon as he let go. She was impossibly real.

“Merry Christmas, Daniel,” she said quietly. She pressed her lips delicately against his cheek, grabbing his hand and holding it firmly in her own. She didn’t let go until she had to as she walked away.

Before she disappeared out of sight into the cold New York winter night, she took one last look through the door to see Daniel standing where she’d left him, looking down at his shoes with a small, bashful smile.

“We made it home,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas everybody :)


End file.
